Dusk Somewhere

Towards making correct decisions: Against moralism

Posted at — Oct 27, 2022 by Izzy Meckler

Moralism is a certain pattern of thinking (and an accompanying rhetoric) which many comrades use, sometimes unknowingly. The purpose of this note is to clarify what this pattern is and to explain why it does not always lead to the correct decisions.

In practice, it means grounding one’s opinions in the following information:

This is a very small amount of information.

Taking the correct action in any given moment requires effectively synthesizing as much of the available information as you can. The world is complex and the decision-making procedure which determines action must therefore be comparably complex. Concretely, what is going to happen depends on a lot more than your feelings of guilt, the hierarchy of oppression etc., so you had better take more information into account.

Thanks to DT for inspiring this post.